Notes / Commercial Description:
Let's travel back in time again for another Dogfish Head Ancient Ale (Midas Touch was our first foray and Theobroma our most recent). Our destination is 9,000 years ago, in Northern China! Preserved pottery jars found in the Neolithic villiage of Jiahu, in Henan province, have revealed that a mixed fermented beverage of rice, honey and fruit was being produced that long ago, right around the same time that barley beer and grape wine were beginning to be made in the Middle East!

Fast forward to 2005. Molecular archaeologist Dr. Patrick McGovern of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology calls on Dogfish Head to re-create another ancient beverage, and Chateau Jiahu is born.

In keeping with historic evidence, Dogfish brewers use brown rice syrup, orange blossom honey, muscat grape, barley malt and hawthorn berry. The wort is fermented for about a month with sake yeast until the beer is ready for packaging.

A: A creamy yellow/orange color with a beautiful thumb of frothy white head that lingers.

S: It smells like a really nice German sack mead. Absolutely enticing with a rich grape back note making me want to drink deep. There is a faint spicy note in the background that reminds me of saffron.

T: The taste is incredible, it is such a smooth crisp beverage. The honey is really what stands up front, with is rich sweet slightly spicy character and the fruitiness that the hawthorn fruit adds mingles with the musky tartness of the grape. As it warms a slightly more malty flavor becomes present as well as a more earthy fruitiness. The alcohol in the beer is present as it warms, but does not take away from anything, instead adds a warmth and a richness to this delicate complex brew.

M: It is a medium bodied beer, but the smoothness and richness of it makes me want to take deep sips. It coats the mouth nicely and leaves a beautiful sweet dark spicy flavor on the tongue.

D: The most drinkable beer I have ever had, my absolute favorite and probably similar to what God would drink, if not the same heavenly brew.